Monday, July 05, 2010

The Opposite

A couple of reader comments on my last post:

Actually everyone should tune in to the MSM. You can understand exactly what is going on by only believing in the opposite of what their propaganda spin is. The more they howl...the more you know what not to believe.

Actually, during the last two decades of the Soviet bloc's existence, people did start tuning in to the televised news programs to get a sense of what was going on by simply believing the opposite of what the newscasters said. A few people who made it to the West at that time were confused by Western newscasts, they obviously were lying at times, but at other times they weren't lying, so they were useless as a source of information, you couldn't just believe them all the time or disbelieve them all the time. In the US at least, we now are getting into Soviet territory with any televised news, the newsweeklies, and the wire services.

I'm becoming one of those middle aged men who skips straight to the sports section of the newspaper and disregards the rest. If a newspaper publishes that the Yankees beat the Blue Jays, 7-6, the Yankees probably really did play the Blue Jays yesterday and beat them by one run. If the story is on trouble in the Caucasuses, I have to go to other sources to verify that these countries exist, and I can be pretty sure the newspapers' take on them is not accurate.

I once went on a date with a woman who was born and raised in the Soviet Union. We were talking about the 1980 Winter Olympics and the U.S. hockey team, and I asked her if the Soviet media put any special spin on the story at the time. She said the public was told that the Soviet team in Lake Placid was forced to stay in a decrepit, abandoned building that lacked heat and electricity, which obviously put the players at a severe mental and physical disadvantage. I wonder who would be surprised by that sort of thing if it came from certain parts of our media today.